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It's wild how there are no FOSS parental control apps (hexbear.net)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@hexbear.net
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Who wants to use a proprietary app for something like that and let it collect data? The FOSS ecosystem lacks some essential stuff

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[–] 12 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Don't use parental controls? My parents had router-level parental controls and I simply used a VPN to get around it. Kids will do what they want to do. Most parental control blocks end up blocking important websites like sex education or LGBT content. Not to mention they block cool stuff kids should be doing like piracy.

Just have antivirus software installed and teach your kids how to not download malware, not get scammed, etc. The main threats to kids online are ones that will not be blocked by parental controls. Plenty of kids getting scammed on Roblox or whatever.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    Don't use parental controls? My parents had router-level parental controls

    well that was a silly thing to write.

    If you are the parent you don't need to block scarleteen, or go ask alice, or whatever sex ed website you're thinking of.

    Why can't parental controls block a game? it seems very plausible to me. they probably all connect to certain servers, use known ports or otherwise have recognizable traffic.

    teach your kids how to not download malware, not get scammed, etc

    can you please teach the rest of earth's population once you've figured it out

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago* (7 children)

    If you are the parent you don’t need to block scarleteen, or go ask alice, or whatever sex ed website you’re thinking of.

    And then kids need to go out of their way to ask their parents to unblock, which is embarrassing. Just stop trying to control what your kids do online. They're not your property.

    Why can’t parental controls block a game?

    I never said they couldn't. My point is that parental controls wouldn't block other players on a game who mean a child harm, unless you block the game as a whole. Plenty of people want their kids to be able to play video games but not to be scammed on them.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    It isn't about being anyone's property, their brains aren't done cooking and they can't make sound decisions.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Yeah that's just plainly reactionary. Nobody's brain is "done cooking". At what stage do you get to have personhood? If kids can't make sound decisions let's just lock them all up in mental asylums yeah?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    I don't have to be able to pin down the precise moment you should be allowed to make all your own mistakes to tell you it isn't at age 8. If you're 30 and still want to put forks in electrical outlets, have at it. You understand the consequences. That isn't stripping children of their person hood.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Well if I see a group of people as people, I don't say they're inherently incapable of making their own decisions and should be controlled. Before anything else, the way you're talking about children is incredibly offensive, and it's nuts how normalised it is to talk about children in this way to the point where people do it in supposedly radical spaces. It's obvious how reactionaries use this rhetoric, e.g. it underpins a massive part of the current anti-trans panic (and was the canary in the coal mine so to speak—western mainstream press fearmongered about trans kids first).

    And like I said initially, kids will get around parental blocks anyway. Because despite what you think, kids are not stupid. They can problem solve. So are you going to just slightly inconvenience your child and have them end up on the websites you don't want them on anyway without any real attention to the issues at hand, or are you, as a human with more experience than them, going to lend them some of that experience and teach them the skills they need to keep themselves safe online?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Children, to varying degrees, are not capable of making all of their own decisions or suffering the consequences of all their own actions, should they be allowed. Setting aside the moral panic of the month, there really are many things available on the internet that are actively harmful to kids; predators, scams, disinformation, viruses. As a child with unrestricted internet access you will encounter all of the above.

    I agree with you that children deserve free access to information. I'm not pearl clutching about Timmy reading a book about a character with two mommies or something. Do you really think kids are better off learning every racial slur and reactionary opinion before the age of 10? That's what dominates the internet as it exists today. That is what will be deliberately served to them by the algorithms.

    teach them the skills they need to keep themselves safe online?

    You can do both, just like how you install outlet covers for the 5% of the time your back is momentarily turned, not as an alternative to watching your kids.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    These things are harmful to people of all ages. It's all fine and dandy to say, well I'm a good parent and parental controls won't cause problems for my child—every parent thinks that. Children experiencing abuse need to be able to access resources to help them identify what they're experiencing and how to get away from it. LGBT children need to access resources to help them come to terms with who they are. And parental control tools give parents of these children the ability to prevent them from accessing these resources. They are tools of control and oppression.

    Setting aside the moral panic of the month

    How can you "set aside the moral panic of the month" when your argument is the foundation of the reactionary moral panic of the month? Let me tell you, when I was a kid questioning my gender, I wanted to try wearing a packer (a prosthetic, flaccid penis) to see how I felt about possibly having a penis/bulge. Do you know where you get packers from? Sex toy shops. Is this a problem? Absolutely, prosthetics for trans people should be sold in places that are not sex toy shops. But if you live outside big western countries, the reality is, if you want a prosthetic penis, it will be sold as a sex toy, even though it's a flaccid penis that can't be used for sex. These sex toy shops are obviously blocked by parental controls. I had to use a VPN to get around it. Do you really want questioning children to be forced to go to their parents and say "hey, I'm questioning my gender, can you unblock this sex toy store so that I can buy myself a prosthetic penis?" Do you really think that's a good idea? Do you think maybe there's a reason why I, as a 13 year old, opted to install a VPN instead of asking my parents that question?

    And what's more, kids will try to get around parental controls, sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully. If they are not very sharp as you seem to be suggesting is the case, then they will download all sorts of malware trying to unblock things.

    Parental controls harm kids. Not just by restricting their freedom and autonomy, but also by encouraging them to put themselves in real danger trying to circumvent blocks, and by preventing the most vulnerable children from accessing the resources they need to keep themselves safe.

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